This invention relates to explosives and more particularly to polymeric wax coated explosives.
Previous methods of coating crystalline high explosives use polyethylene wax emulsified with fatty acids and basic materials such as ammonia and morpholine. The explosive crystals are then slurried in the aqueous emulsion. The emulsion is then broken with a heavy metal salt such as BaCl.sub.2 thus freeing the polyethylene particles to coat the explosive crystals. After the particles are coated and the mixing operation is completed, the remaining water is removed and the coated crystals are washed. The effluent water from this process contains Ba.sup.++ ions which are highly toxic and quite costly to remove. The Ba.sup.++ ions must be removed before the effluent water can be disposed of in the conventional manner.